“BONGO bongo in the Congo”—that is how many of those who spend time in one of the world’s most compelling and cruelly dysfunctional countries sometimes disparage what is written about it. Such writing has some unmistakable hallmarks: a nervous oscillation between fear and fascination with the country and its people; a gnawing suspicion that they may be cursed, evil or mad; and an obligatory reference to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, a novella written over a century ago, when Congo was an unmapped slave state. Anjan Sundaram’s account, “Stringer”, has all this and more.

It is off-putting in several ways. Start with Mr Sundaram’s basic narrative—that, forsaking a lucrative job in banking, he plunged into one of the world’s most ignored countries with the improbable aim of rescuing it from obscurity and launching a career in journalism. This is, to put it kindly, an exaggeration. Congo is one of the most written-about countries in Africa. Jason Stearns, Gérard Prunier and Michela Wrong have recently done so with authority and brilliance. Far from obscure, Congo has also launched many journalistic careers: had Mr Sundaram wanted, as he claims, to bring a benighted country to global attention, he should have gone to the Central African Republic.

A bigger problem is what he says about Congo, most of which is unrelentingly hostile. Mr Sundaram shivers at the nocturnal pedestrians of Kinshasa, “the whites of their eyes stabbing the darkness”. He recoils from their poverty, “ ‘Give me money,’ said the shapes of their lips.” He appears to dread most of the Congolese he does not know and dislike many of those he does. He seems to find it genuinely amazing that anyone could be happy in such a wretched country. This is hardly insightful: it does not help explain why a war estimated to have claimed over 5m lives drags on in Congo.

Yet “Stringer” is still worth reading. It is a reminder of a reductive and fearful Western view of Africa that has prevailed for too long. More positively, as a writer Mr Sundaram shows signs of real talent. He has an acute eye and writes beautifully; his passages on Kinshasa, a city of street boys, prostitutes and diamond dealers, are always evocative. Even his “Heart of Darkness” reference—a description of a soldier firing his AK-47 into the jungle from aboard a Congo riverboat—is high class. Mr Sundaram is a gifted young writer. He will, one hopes, do better than this.